February 12, 2016

Summer League - CSM vs. Imperial Guard & Necrons

Two games last night with a different list from last week still infantry based but hopefully with more hitting power in combat if I used it right. The games were very different the first against a really interesting Imperial Guard army the second against a beautifully painted Necron force.

Game 1
A ton of Imperial Guard armed to the teeth with Plasma rifles and backed by the really cool orders system which my opponent used to great effect continually giving his units "Ignore Cover" and/or "Extra Shots" nearly every turn. I screwed up early by advancing my CSM Squad up the board when I had originally intended to leave them back as fire support. I also opted to Deep Strike my Lord and his Terminator Squad something that didn't turn out to well.

CSM advance up into (sort of) cover only to have 3 full squads of Imperial debus in front of them armed to the teeth with Plasma rifles. End result 14 very very dead CSM.

Lord & Terminators deep strike suffer a mishap and get placed right in the middle of the Imperial Guard. I forgot they could still move which in hindsight might have helped them. 1 Turn of shooting later they were all dead as my dice became addicted to the number 1

Meanwhile the Cultists would prove to be the stars of the day capturing early objectives and gaining VP

Unable to shoot the Cultists off 2 squads of Guard assault them (after a 3rd is killed by Cultist Auto Pistols). But those guard also get wiped out and the Cultists stand firm.

Meanwhile the sole remaining Obilterator decides to Powerfist a Guard Tank which explodes wiping out the Cultists he was supporting.

Deep striking the Terminators was not a good idea unfortunately there is nothing in the CSM codex that allows you to prevent scattering. The Cultists were just stellar the entire game and they and the Obilterators hung on for 6 turns. For 4 of those I was ahead on VP but that didn't last. A very enjoyable game against an Imperial Guard codex that looks like a lot of fun to play.

Game 2 vs. Necrons
I had no idea how these guys worked so finding out that they have an army wide 4+ Feel No Pain rule or Resurrection or whatever it is came as a nasty shock. Decided not to Deep Strike my Lord as he got extremely lucky rolling for his Gift of Mutation ending up with Icy Aura, +1 T (making him T6 with MoN), Hatred and the ability to re-roll AS. The Terminator Champion also got lucky and received Shrouded and Fleshbane. Cultists sat on or advanced towards objectives, CSM & Obiliterators hung back to shot stuff and Terminators munched on up to chop things to pieces.

The initial set up - 6 objectives overall I had two of them at the start and 1 more within a single move. All of the fast moving nasty high strength Necron stuff was on my right flank.

Basically Necron Space Marines with the extra save

Very cool models but very easy to kill

The two battlelines draw closer to each-other no one's dead yet but I manage to get first blood when shooting takes out the flying weird looking Jet Bike things

Enjoyable thing about this game was that my Lord finally got into melee combat where he just went berko. The Terminators existed largely as wound buffers but the Heavy Flamer definitely came in handy prior to assaults. Those extra Necron saves were just annoying as hell though although having a unit with AP2 weapons meant they only got one save not two. The Black Mace proved to be great when it got wounds through and as I was rolling 5-6 each round the Lord was wacking out 8-9 attacks +1 for the charge nearly every turn. AP4 though is weak even when you wound on 2's having hatred made a big difference.

Necrons feel the pain when the Black Mace's curse kicks in and they start failing toughness tests

All told my Lord chopped through 25 Necrons in 3 units pretty much single handed half of them dying to failed Toughness tests as a result of the curse. Unfortunately behind him everything else in my army died. Last turn of the game and I opted to go for it and charge the Necron General knowing he had to fight me when I challenged. Unfortunately for me I saved all my bad rolls for that final combat and couldn't kill him.

Cultists survive 7 rounds of combat against Scarab swarms who kept getting reinforcements shot into their ranks by the flying thing behind them.

This didn't end well

This didn't end well either - S7 with 3-4 attacks each is hard to defend against

So two more games and two losses but I'm finally figuring out the Tactical Objective thing which is very different to WHFB where you basically just tried to kill everything on the board. Had a clear advantage in VP for both games in the beginning but then lost out as my units started to die and I was unable to take objectives.

Terminators quite frankly suck ass if they were a WHFB unit they would as Elite infantry have 2 wounds each not just 1 so here in 40k they died like flies. CSM Lords are just awesome in combat but they need to get their to be effective. Cultists are also pretty good just need more of them only have 35 models when 80 would be better. Infantry based CSM are always going to be fighting up hill though but the Gift of Mutuation is something I really do like.

2 comments:

Drop the Terminators and look at getting some miniatures to be Chaos Spawn. They are fast and give them Mark of Nurgle for a bit of durability. In the missions you are playing they could be a great distraction unit the opponent has to deal with AND great meat shields for your Lord.